[4] In a letter to George F. Clarke from Edwin Smith, in the Queens Library's Berrien's Island Supreme Court Case Records, 1849-1851, the writer (Smith) wrote that he was called upon by Blake and his Committee to examine and observe on the relative advantage of using both Riker's and Berrien's Islands for a city cemetery.
Geer, the resident physician, and Mr. Marcellus Eells, who volunteered his boat to be used for the occasion to make the necessary examinations of the Island(s) and collect such information in relation to the limited time granted to them.
[3] In his letter, Edwin Smith stated 4 reasons in which the Berrien Island was considered the most appropriate location in which to construct and hold a cemetery: (1) The soil was a dryer and looser formation and the lands were used to a higher elevation above the tides; (2) The natural basin of it should be deemed expeditious after being drained could be used as a cemetery without excavation below the present surface by depositing the remaining therein and covering them with the earth from the surrounding high lands thereby grading the island; (3) The location being well over the southerly side of the sound and the cemetery being most offensive during the warm summer months.
When southerly winds mostly prevail it could not so much affect the neighboring country/county as is located on the other island; (4) It is not so directly in the view of travel through the sound.
[3] In addition, the Special Committee listed previously visited Berrien's Island and farm property in 1850.
[4] According to the report, the island was situated in Flushing Bay, away from the City improvements and it is farther away from the five other locations which were also under consideration.
According to Google Maps and the information recently provided, it would appear that the Island is somewhere near or off the coast of where LaGuardia Airport is located.
Furthermore, Mr. Smith the surveyor and Mr. Geer the Health Commissioner showed how this ground could be adapted to meet the desired purposes.
6: Board of Assistant Aldermen, September 24th, 1849, the writer believed that this island was the place in which "the dead can rest in peace until the end of time, undisturbed by the approach of improvement, or the busy sound of commerce, and until it shall please the all-wise Creator to call them from their last earthly resting place".
[5] Under virtue of one or both Resolutions issued by the Common Council of New York, these men were instructed and restrained from appropriating, expending, or paying out any money of the City of New York for the purpose of purchasing Berrien's Island and the farm at Newtown, Queens County, owned by Ezra Berrien.